Anatomy of Murder - On the Road Again

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

A couple’s life on the move - is it wanderlust or something more sinister?For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/. Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

There are some people that have ill intent in their head and they will stop at nothing to see that through. It's just shocking to what lengths someone will go through to hide and conceal what they're doing. I have to think like that too. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murder. Today's story takes place in Mansfield, Ohio. At least that's where it begins.

And Mansfield is about halfway between Columbus and Cleveland. And the case involved a woman by the name of Patsy Hudson. She was kind of a loner. She had a few of her own cats. This is Detective Bill Bichon from the Mansfield Police Department. She fed a lot of the neighbor cats. And of course, when you feed a couple neighbor cats, you get a couple more neighbor cats show up. She was 62 years old in 2015.

She was a woman who liked to keep to herself. She maybe loved animals more than people. And I always look at that as potentially a lot about the heart of a person because animals love you unconditionally back. Police in Mansfield, Ohio, get a call from a woman wanting to report her 62-year-old sister, Patsy Hudson, as missing. It was not uncommon for the next door neighbors to not see her out and about for weeks at a time. And this is the first of what will be really unusual twists in this case. You see, the last time anyone saw Patsy was June. That's right, six months earlier. The missing persons report came in in December of 2015. The strange part was how long she had been missing. The majority of missing

person reports are filed, you know, a day or two after nobody's had contact with the victim. This was six months with no contact. Kind of what led to the missing person report being filed at all was that her sister went to her home to drop off a Christmas gift. And while she had family that certainly were in a drivable distance, this was not a very close family at all. It was not uncommon, apparently, for them to go months without talking. So when a few months went by and she hadn't heard from her sister, she contacted Patsy's son, which would be her nephew, and he hadn't heard from her either. But once the request was made by her sister, the first step is road patrol begins at the home of

the person who is suspected to be missing. And while normally a missing adult is reported within the first 24 to 48 hours, starting at the home could bring useful information. When the patrol guys got there, of course, there's mail backed up, there's newspapers all over the porch. The window was about eye level. And you could see in the house, and you could see that the TV was on from the window, nothing appeared to be out of place. And at one point, the road patrol, they got that window open and actually did go in and look for her. And there was nobody home. It looked like she had just walked out, maybe went to the store or nothing out of place that would lead them to believe that anything had happened in there. You know, we always talk about developing a timeline, and this is a real helpful clue to help you build it.

Now, you have newspapers outside. And what was the first day it wasn't picked up? Does that coincide with the mail at the house? And on the flip side of that, you have a house with the electric still on. And this is what's interesting to me. Can someone go six months without paying an electric bill? And you know, something that was interesting was that it wasn't the first time that police had been asked to do a wellness check. One of them was actually the mailman. You know, he's there every day and he finds, you know, the mail that I put in there last week is still there. That shouldn't be. And really, I guess, not being family, he really shouldn't be the one

that reports somebody missing. The police went out there and did a wellness check. There wasn't anyone home. But again, how often has it happened that someone forgets to do a stop on their mail or doesn't even think to do it at all if they go away. And without having any specific information about the occupant or whether it was anything sinister or strange that she actually wasn't home, police kind of left it there and it was noted. I wouldn't be rushed to take a missing person report from a mailman. But, you know, just talking about where she lived, one of the reasons why it seemed

unusual to the postal carrier is that it wasn't a really transient area. And it's in a working class type neighborhood. Not many of the houses are rentals. Most of them are owned. And a good bit of the people that live in that area have lived in that area for some of them quite some time. And everyone pretty much knew one another. However, at the same time, many kept to themselves. Her neighbors told investigators that she normally had, as you mentioned earlier, a lot of cats outside. The neighbor's right next door.

He's the one that told me about the cat. You know, he said, well, there's a lot of cats around. And he's the one that mentioned, you know, I haven't seen her, but I haven't seen any cats either. And that's kind of odd. To me, it's a sign that they hadn't been fed in quite some time, confirming that she had been missing for months. Or did she maybe just pick up and go?

I mean, if it's someone who really doesn't have any close ties, and we know that she is very vested in her animals, like many parents are, hopefully all with their children, that she just picked up and went somewhere. And who was she to tell? We know she's not close with her family. It didn't seem that she was particularly close with her neighbors. So really, it was a bit of a head-scratcher for a while for police.

Once road patrol officers did their initial canvas of the neighborhood, they talked to neighbors. They called local hospitals, which is sort of standard operating procedure, in an adult missing case. The next step in these types of cases is to elevate the investigation to the Detective Bureau. And assigned to the investigation for this one was Detective Bill Bouchon. I did homicides. I did runaway juveniles. I did everything in between.

I had done several missing person cases before, and I had never had one that was missing for six months before anybody reported her. Let's also just talk about where this took place. You know, Ohio, you can all picture it on a map. It's really a corridor populated by other states around it. And it does make it just a bit of a pass-through corridor, whether it's truckers going through from state to state, people passing by from one place to another. And it sometimes factors in and makes it a bit more difficult to figure out exactly what's what. So while Detective Bichon is building his case to find out really whether this is a missing person case or something much worse, he's got to find out more whether this is a missing person case or something much worse.

He's got to find out more about the profile of his victim. So I did everything I could to contact all the family I could find, and none of them had any information. So then I started with the neighbors, the neighbor across the street that said, you know, I haven't seen her since June either. but the man and woman that moved in the house right next door there at 290, I haven't seen them since June either. They left same time Patsy disappeared. To me, that's odd. I mean, what are the odds that a neighbor moves out right in the same time frame? He got a bit lucky in this initial canvas on the block. And when I look at what the possibilities are, I really look at it

as one of three. One, it's just coincidence. Two, maybe they took off and went somewhere together, whether that's a vacation or moved off to some greener pastures, if you will. Or three, is it something that investigators really need to get involved in because the answer of what happened to Patsy just isn't going to be good. My initial thought was maybe she just up and left voluntarily with these neighbors. It didn't seem likely based on just what I knew about her. She's a homebody. I thought it might be a little odd for her to up and leave with a couple neighbors. They only lived there for about a month and a half. You know, it was a thought, well, maybe she did leave with them. What if she did? Where would they be? The neighbor across the street, very observant guy. I said, what can you tell me? He had some interaction with them a little bit, and he knew the gentleman's name was Walter,

and they had been told that the female's name was Tara. They didn't own the house, and it was Walt's uncle who was helping the two, who were pretty much just down on their luck. So while the neighborhood wasn't transient, these two landed there really out of the goodness of their family, who wanted to kind of give these two at least a temporary fresh start. The vibe I got from all the neighbors was they didn't really care for Walter and the female. They were odd. I mean, they didn't really fit in there.

Another important piece of information came from the interview with the uncle. He had said in July he too had noticed that the couple had vacated the home, taken all of their possessions, and left in that van. He gave us Walter's full name. He gave us the van information along with the license plate. I decided at that point I ought to try to find them. And his first move was to run or enter the license plate into a national database to see if the van had been spotted or the couple.

I wanted to know if the license plate, Walter's information, or Kara's information, which all we had on her was a name. We didn't have a birthdate, social security number, anything. If any of that information had been run by any officer in the country, and I found out it had been run by several different agencies in that time frame, one of which was Greenfield, Indiana. So we contacted Greenfield, Indiana, asked them, hey, you ran this license plate and this guy's name on this particular day.

Why did you do that? And they found that they stopped the van because a female who lived in their town had reported that her mother had been at her house with this gentleman in this blue van and her mom had indicated to her that she's being held against her will. Investigators went to speak to a woman in Greenfield, Indiana who had called in out of concern for her mom. This lady who called the police happened to be the daughter of this female that we knew as Kara. She called Greenfield PD, who stopped the van. And in the van was Walter and this Kara. And Kara told them, no, I'm not being held against my will. I'm here

on my own free will. And they let him go. There is more than enough reason to talk to both Walter and Kara about the disappearance of Patsy Hudson. Some of their activities are suspicious and given the opportunity to talk with them, I believe a skilled interviewer would be able to get a sense to rule them in or out of this investigation. Remember, all we have at this moment

is a missing person and let's get more from the caller in Greenfield and why she would make that abduction claim. She told us the same story that she told Greenfield Police Department that her mom showed up with this guy that turned out to be Walter in this van that she had never seen before. They got rid of some property out of the van and then they stayed for a couple, three days. And she told him, look, you can't stay here. You got to go.

And that's when they left. And that's when she called Greenfield PD and all that happened. The daughter insisted to investigators that her mom led her to believe that she was being held against her will. So investigators really need to get to the bottom of where this couple is to try to make sense. Is this just some strange coincidence or is there something criminal going on here? But it's what she told investigators next that made this trip to Indiana all the more worth it. Kara wasn't her real name. Her name is Linda Buckner. She uses aliases because she's wanted in Kentucky. Now we know that Kara is actually an alias for Linda Buckner,

and she's wanted in Kentucky. But what she's wanted for in this world of homicide is on the lower level. She's wanted for fraudulent financial crimes. She was able to give us a picture of Linda and gave us Linda's birthday and all that. And it also showed us that Patsy was not in the van. And Patsy had not been to the daughter's house when they showed up there three or four days before the van was stopped. You know, this is great intelligence about a potential suspect in what may be a disappearance of a woman who may have left not under her own will. But then the daughter said, I'm not done really giving you information.

In fact, what she told them next would really turn this investigation on its head. She told us when we were there that she had a phone call on or about July the 4th of 15th that Walter had a body in a bathtub and was going to bury him. I said, well, I mean, does that strike you as strange that she would leave a message like that? And she said, no, not really, because my mom is a world-class liar. She kind of blew it off like, I don't believe her.

I mean, she lies about everything. And just to remind everyone about the timeline of what we're talking about here, remember, Patsy Hudson is last seen in June. She's reported missing in December. And so by the time Detective Bichon is speaking with now Linda Buckner's daughter, we're talking early January of 2016. But when she's saying that her mom made these statements

about the body in the bathtub, that her mom was referring to statements made back around July of 2014, that would put it in very close to the timeline that Patsy Hudson was last seen. I mean, there are several things to unpack here, right? First, lining up perfectly with our timeline, the couple across the street who disappeared at the very same time frame as our victim. Then you have one of them turn out to be a fugitive from justice. When you put all of this

together, it ain't looking good. I had a really bad feeling about Patsy's status at that point. I told my sergeant who went with me, I think they killed her. I think somebody killed her somewhere between maybe Mansfield and Greenfield, Indiana. Now we have somebody that's a fugitive who's lying about her identity. They're involved with potentially a missing person, and where do we go from here? So they start looking at Patsy's bank account activity, and what they can see is that her debit card is being used, and it's being used not only all over town, all over the good old USA. One of the very first places was Greenfield, Indiana.

They literally can trace her cards going all the way up to Montana. So I went and subpoenaed his information from the credit union, and it told us where his card had been used. And lo and behold, his card was used at the exact same ATM and times and dates that Patsy's had been used, all the way across the country. That told us at least they were in possession of her debit card, but they were not in possession of her because Greenfield PD had stopped them

and Patsy was not with them, but clearly her debit card was with them. If we had a body in this case, if we knew Patsy Hudson was dead, it would be reaching my personal threshold to ask my prosecutor partners to take some action, right? But at this point, it's be reaching my personal threshold to ask my prosecutor partners to take some action, right? But at this point, it's highly circumstantial.

And, you know, of course, my instinct says to me, well, nothing good is happening when it comes to Patsy Hudson. But there really isn't enough of anything here to definitively say that her disappearance was sinister or even more so related to these two individuals. Anyone who has chased fugitives before knows the best way to catch them is to try to think like them. And the first step is to know

as much as you can about them. I mean, reaching out to family members was exactly the right starting point for Detective Bishong and his team. And it didn't take long for them to get a last name associated with Walter. Walter's last name was Renz.

We talked to his parents. They had disowned him. Not that he had done anything horribly criminal, but they didn't agree with his lifestyle. He had tried to sell himself as a Native American and had actually lived on reservations. They had nothing to do with him, didn't know where

he was, what he was doing, or who he was doing it with. They started to look more into who Walter Renz and Linda Buckner were. She had lived a hard life, kind of a strange duck, really. She didn't have a problem living in a little two-man pup tent in state parks. I don't know, I guess what you'd call a lost soul, really. Kind of a transient that just went with the flow. And in this particular case, went with the flow with Walter. But I'll say this, what I'd love an opportunity to do is to find them, separate them, go at or talk to them. Linda would be first because she has the act of warring. And get her to open up, show her what's at stake and a path to shape her future.

Detective Bashan may have the same plan, but he needed to find them. So police literally went to the map. We went and bought a big, flat United States map. We had an intern that came in for like two or three weeks, and we had him go across that entire map and mark, on such and such a date, the license plate from the van was run here. And on such and such a date, Walter's credit card was used here, and Patsy's was used here.

And so we had a visual graph, really, of you could sit here and look and see exactly where they went and when. Detective Bichon wanted to broaden the bolo or be on the lookout for the couple, and a great place to start was where Linda was already a fugitive. Knowing that Linda was wanted, I contacted the parole officer in Kentucky, and we got the warrant issued for nationwide pickup so that when we found them, we would have something to arrest them for, to question them. Because without a warrant, if they got stopped in wherever it was, then we'd have to let them go. So we got the warrant for her, and I issued a warrant through our court for Walter for the fraud of using her bank account.

And we got that issued nationwide also. And it was at that point that we turned to the U.S. Marshals to find them. The U.S. Marshal Service is under the Department of Justice. And a U.S. Marshal really has one mission, is to get the most violent fugitives off the street. And when you have a violent offender who may have fled across state lines or even outside the U.S., they really know their stuff. And while the U.S. Marshals are tracking these two down, police get the tip they were waiting for. One night I was at home. It was later in the evening and my phone rang and it was a lady

that lived in a little trailer park out in the middle of nowhere, Mississippi, who had an incredible story about two people moving into the trailer next to her, and that was eye-opening, to say the least. Just as a nationwide manhunt was underway for the couple, Detective Bichon gets another unexpected call. And just like everything else in this case so far, the caller had quite a story to tell. She told me that a man and a woman named Walter and a lady named Kara moved into a really a broken down old motor home in the trailer park next to her.

And that's sitting around the fire one night. They're all drinking. Walter and Linda tell her out of the blue, you're a nice neighbor. And it's a good thing because the last neighbor we had in Mansfield, we killed her and we dismembered her and left. I mean, just think about this for a second. You're sitting out there and you meet this couple. And now she's talking about hearing that they said they some garden utensils, she explained, to keep. And they hid them underneath her trailer, like a machete and a hatchet. We have two potential crime scenes here.

Patsy's home back in Mansfield, Ohio, and the trailer of our new witness. I had no reason to believe that she was not telling us the absolute truth because none of that had been in any kind of newspaper on any type of internet. So for her to be able to call and tell us about what they claimed happened in Mansfield, a place she had never been, I thought there was very serious possibility that that was in fact true. And let's now go back to the story about the body in the bathtub. We got another search warrant and went back to Patsy's house with our forensic team and went over her bathroom with a fine-tooth comb, trying to find evidence of anybody, in particular her, being dismembered in that bathroom. Forensic investigators did go back to Patsy's home and test the areas inside and, of course, in the bathtub. But nothing was collected.

And now to be clear, that doesn't mean a crime wasn't committed on her. Just no evidence was located. Also, the absence of evidence does not disprove the story from Mississippi. For sure not. And it happens all the time. It just means that it's going to take that much more work to try to put the pieces together. So when they left, they stole the Jeep. She was glad they left because she believed them. She believed what they told her. And then a little while later, they got in touch with her again saying, hey,

they're going to mail a new bank card to me, and I don't have an address, so they're going to send it to you. Will you hold it for us until I can come and get it? And she agreed to do that. So now Detective Bichon and his team have a potential address for our two suspects. So before they can get there, the easiest thing for them is to pick up the phone, call local law enforcement, and send them there to confirm, even just to confirm on a surveillance perspective, are they there? But for some reason or another, that agency did not want to get involved. The local sheriff down there was less than cooperative in our case.

He was so uncooperative that we asked him to secure the items that were under her trailer, just lock them up, and we will make arrangements to get them. And he wouldn't even go out and do that. This happens every once in a while, but it's obviously frustrating for his team. We knew it was going to be tight because Walter knew the card was coming,

and so we knew we were going to have a very limited amount of time to catch him there. And with no help from the local sheriff, the marshals were not able to get there in time. And she couldn't stall any longer, so he took the card and left. But the marshals did collect that evidence under the trailer for us. Anastasia, you know I never have an issue about speaking my mind, whether it's in law enforcement or whether it's in television or if it's in news. And I just really can't see a solid reason

why that if you had an opportunity to go there and just surveil it, why you would turn that down. So to me, it's kind of disappointing. For sure. But certainly Bill Bichon and the rest of the team, they weren't done yet because now they ended up getting another lead. And this time,

that lead came from yet another state. We're talking North Carolina. We ended up finding the van in North Carolina. It had been traded a couple of times and a guy had it. He was very cooperative. So we sent a forensic team to that van and they couple times, and a guy had it. He was very cooperative. We sent a forensic team to that van, and they searched it, trying to find any evidence of, you know, any crime involving Patsy, which really didn't get us any evidence. In past episodes, I've referenced my work

alongside the members of the U.S. Marshal Service hunting fugitives, and since the case was taking detectives from Mansfield, Ohio, all over the map, getting deputies from the U.S. Marshal Service really made sense. You know, it brings great resources, highly trained fugitive hunters. And for Detective Bichon, he was sure that he provided the Marshal Service with the most current information that they had.

He gave them the license plate number of that stolen Jeep, and they were headed east. We did have a not good picture of Linda. Of course, we had a picture of Walter from his driver's license and tell them they like to tent camp in state parks. So more than likely, that's where you're going to find them. And about 42 hours later, they tracked the phone. That's where they found them in a state park,

found the Jeep, parked at a campsite, approached him, arrested them both without incident, outside of Hohenwald, Tennessee. And now that detectives had this pair in custody, they can finally, if they chose to, hear their story. They both waived their extradition to Ohio, and so they brought Walter first. And when they interviewed Walter down there, he didn't know nothing. He didn't know anything about it. The typical, I don't know

what you're talking about. Linda, she didn't know anything about anything. So this was the moment that Detective Bichon and his team had worked so hard to achieve. The opportunity to question the two prime suspects in what they believed to be the murder of Patsy Hudson. But that ride back to Ohio took approximately eight hours, and during that ride, the stories changed. They both claimed that she just up and died of a heart attack. Well, of course, Walter said he just wanted to call the police and said, hey, look, she died on her living room floor.

She must have had a heart attack. But Linda didn't want to do that because Linda was wanted. Of course, Linda said that she just died of a heart attack, and it was Walter's idea to cut her up and get out of here so that they're not questioned about this potential natural death. It was just a crime of opportunity that, hey, you know, sorry, she's gone. But well, you know, her debit card is still here. We might as well use it. It is literally four syllables that come to mind. Ridiculous. Just think about that. Someone dies of natural causes and you're going

to then hide their body, secrete their body, let alone dismember. I mean, literally take another human being apart. I mean, that makes absolutely no sense. So, of course, Detective Bichon decided to look deeper and look more into that part of the story that they told. She died of natural causes. Why did you go to those lengths to dismember her in her own bathroom and then spend three days cleaning that bathroom so that the crime lab will find no evidence of her being dismembered in there? And there's no good answer for that.

Clearly, the most disturbing part of this case was confirmed what actually happened to Patsy Hudson. In grave detail, Renz admitted that he dismembered Patsy in her own bathtub. He said, I can show you where we dumped the pieces. And they took him that night. They took our detectives, the sheriff's department, anybody they could find. And he drove them around and said, now here, she made me throw out the legs or whatever. And they would search the area and some of the places they found the body parts that he explained would be there.

And other places they did not. Keep in mind that it had been such a long time since Patsy Hudson died and where it was that they disposed of her body. So the elements could explain why they weren't able to locate all the remains. Whether that's scavengers or flooding. There are a number of reasons that could explain it. And in the end, only 20 to 25% of her body was actually recovered. And DNA tests on some of those remains

helped investigators confirm a positive ID. The DNA that we had got earlier from the son and the sister, and they were able to confirm that the remains we found were Patsy. But while they had enough of her remains to make an ID, investigators weren't able to do much with it. There's not enough left to give a cause of death, really, or a very accurate time frame. And they hit another roadblock.

As it turns out, all the tools and utensils that were found under the trailer in Mississippi did not give us any of Patsy's DNA on it. At this point, police don't really have any evidence to suggest that Patsy didn't die from natural causes, and we only may find their story not credible, but it's about what we can prove. You know, and I've handled cases like this, and they are so difficult to prove when you can't actually prove the cause of death itself is homicidal. And you really have to look at the outlying circumstantial evidence. And, you know, the cases I've handled here in New York, ultimately, and two that I'm thinking of off the bat, we couldn't charge, at least as far as I

left, because we could never make that connection. And so it's so important to figure out how Patsy died. So one theory on what caused her death dealt with a prescription heart medication Patsy was taking. Investigators confirmed that Renson Buckner had searched the internet at a library about the negative side effects of taking too much atenolol. And as it turns out, the side effects of an overdose is

death, and that could mimic a heart attack. And shortly before Patsy disappeared, Buckner went to the hospital claiming to have lost her medication and needed more. First of all, as far as her neighbors were concerned, she was limping around and saying that she was going to the hospital for an ankle injury. Well, guess what? When she got to the hospital, she never complained of that injury. And in light of putting all these pieces together, to me, that clearly goes to her not wanting people to know why she was going and trying to give a false pretense, if you will. But also, the hospital that she went to, it wasn't their local ER.

The closest hospital to where this couple was living was only about three miles away. But the hospital that she chose to go to was about 20 miles outside of town. Now that tells you something else right there. Patsy did tell one of the neighbors that she thought Walter may have poisoned some of her cats, and there was some speculation on our part if maybe he was potentially doing that with atenolol in an attempt to see what effect it had. Now, we couldn't prove that. We never did find any evidence of that, but it certainly made me think. And, you know, when I just think about the act of trying to get medication for something that can mimic a natural cause, there's always something to me that adds to

an additional layer of sinisterness about it. That shows you how forth thought out this was, how premeditated that they're thinking about in advance, not only about killing her, but how to make it seem like something natural to further their plan. The biggest challenge was going to be cause of death. That was my concern along with the prosecutors because we only recovered 20 to 25 percent of her body, that really, you can't walk in with that piece of evidence to say that was what happened. But what you can do, again, it comes back to the surrounding circumstances. And the medical examiner helps us with what we present in court twofold. One, cause of death, but second, manner of death. And when you put all these pieces together, well, guess what? When you only have 25% of a human being recovered and you don't have any of those organs that necessarily show you what caused the death, you're not going to have a cause of death. But

they were able to determine with all these pieces that the death was caused by homicide. So prosecutors needed to go into court and ask the jurors to make that leap, not based on faith, but all the other evidence that they had. And one other important aspect that we don't always have in these stories is a potential motive.

And we do have a pretty good sense here of what the motivator was for homicide. Oh, I think the motive was financial. They figured out that if Patsy came up missing, nobody would miss her for an extended period of time, if ever. She got direct deposit, which they could get, assuming they could get her card and her PIN number, which clearly they did. I mean, I imagine a scenario that they were surveilling her, knowing how many people were visiting, and really the lack of visitors that she was having. She did live alone. She didn't have any close family ties.

She didn't have any family that talked to her every day or religiously. So I think she made their perfect victim. But the motive just being purely financial didn't quite add up. I knew from the bank how much was deposited in her account every month. And I could see that it was being taken out right down to almost the last penny by the end of the month. To me, I thought, who in the world would do this kind of thing or potentially do this kind of thing, what we knew at the time, for that small amount of money? And, you know, this was not a couple that was used to living on very much.

Remember, when they are found, they are literally found camping out in a two-person pup tent in a state park, and that's how they moved around. So this amount of money was definitely going to get them to the places they needed to go. But investigators wondered if there was another motive here. And I look at it in a few ways, right? We know that Linda Buckner is wanted. We know that she assumes the identity of Patsy Hudson, at least as far as getting money out of her bank accounts. But doesn't it also benefit her that if they're stopped or asked,

she can now give this other name of this person who is not wanted for anything. So that actually avoids apprehension of Linda Buckner for being held accountable for her own financial crimes. I hate to use that expression, killing two birds with one stone, because we're talking about a human life, but that's really what they did. If you're talking about motive, that's what I'm talking to the jury about. They kill this woman. They assume her identity to help out one of the two. And that also helps them secure her money. And by dismembering her and making her remains basically disappear, they now keep that scam going until, in this case, police ultimately, fortunately, found them out.

You know, I want to step back a second because we do know that Detective Bichon separated both Buckner and Rents when they interviewed them. Clearly, they were pointing fingers right away at each other. And I wanted to ask you, Anna Seeger, about, you know, going into a courtroom, going into a murder trial like this where you have two separate trials. You know that if they decide to take the stand, which they don't always do, that that would be the testimony that they would be giving about it. You know, it wasn't me. How do you approach that? I mean, in your mind, preparing for a trial, knowing that that's what they may be talking about on the stand. I mean, I love it when they say that, because when you look at everything, well, that is

clearly just now that they're caught, each one, as much as they seem committed to one another, each one of them is really only committed to themselves because now they are too quick to point the finger to say, oh, it wasn't me. Yeah, I did it, but only because I was scared of the other. Remember, and that's exactly what they claim. But, you know, one thing that's interesting to think about, which not everyone knows, is that as prosecutors, you know, you don't have to use the statements that a suspect or a defendant makes. We can choose to do that. And certainly in those nuggets of denials, there was plenty that ultimately corroborated the guilt, the evidence against one of them.

And that's what prosecutors went with. So I am more than happy to put that in front of the jury. Linda's trial went first. I think if there was any question in the jury's mind, I think all of those questions were erased when she took the stand. And just through the manner of questions, it was painfully obvious to anybody that was conscious during that trial that she would lie so much that she couldn't remember her own lie on the stand from what she said five minutes ago. On the stand, Buckner would constantly contradict herself, even when she was questioned by her own attorney.

His whole defense was based around, she did it, it was all her idea, and I only helped because I'm afraid of her. But if you saw Linda, and you saw the pictures of, you know, supposedly she died in her living room, and then she was carried up these narrow steps to the bathroom where she was dismembered in her tub, clearly Linda did not do that on her own. I think the jury had no difficulty in either of these trials, rendering a pretty quick decision. Rents was found guilty on seven charges, including aiding and abetting aggravated murder in connection with the death of Patsy Hudson.

And Buckner found the same fate, although they added a charge for her for collecting those Social Security checks and also charged for abusing a corpse. There are some people that have ill intent in their head, and they will stop at nothing to see that through. It's just shocking to what lengths someone will go through to hide and conceal what they're doing. When I think about this case, it really comes down to they chose to take advantage of someone who they thought would be the perfect victim because she didn't have close family ties. And they took advantage of that to really victimize her. And that is a whole nother level of awful.

Targeted, drugged, dismembered, and dumped like discarded trash. I mean, Patsy Hudson may have been a loner, but her life was simple, and most importantly, she lived her life just the way she wanted to. And, you know, Patsy Hudson, you were victimized because you lived your life in many ways alone, and so I hope that wherever you are, that Patsy Hudson can feel somewhere that she matters.

And she mattered. And the police showed her that in the end. Tune in next Wednesday when we'll dissect another new case on Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original, a Weinberger Media and Forseti Media production. Sumit David is executive producer. Thanks for watching!